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Otto Lewis Lloyd (1895-1971)
}} Biography The following information about Otto, I have gleaned and condensed from a booklet containing the writings of his family members about their personal remembrances of him, as he did not write a personal history of himself. This endeavor is my loving contribution to the family. Otto Lewis Lloyd, son of William Monroe Lloyd and Christina Jacobsen, was born November 7, 1895 in Panguitch, Garfield County, Utah. His parents had moved to Panguitch from Pine Valley, Utah in 1890. Otto was the 4th child of a family of 10 children. After Otto's parents purchased land from Heber Riding and Michael Goheen Lloyd, his brother-in-law and brother, they had about 800 acres to run four herds of common sheep on. They ran these awhile and then sold them and went into the cattle business. They lost money on the sheep because they waited hoping for a better price. The market dropped and they lost money. The cattle ranged down to Waweep. At one time they lost 75 head due to poison weeds. Due to drought conditions, Otto's family left Panguitch and moved to the Uintah Basin arriving in April 1916. The trip took 16 days in a team and wagon. They settled in Upalco, Utah. They lived on an Indian lease and had quite a few cattle, sheep, and goats. They raised good crops of hay and grain. Otto's mother raised a garden and had turkeys and chickens. In this way she earned a little money which made her feel a little independent. Otto's mother was a good cook and always busy. She did a lot of handiwork and the children always remembered her cleaning the woven carpet and putting fresh straw under it. Otto came from a family that was active in the L.D.S. Church. His father served a mission in the Southern States, mainly in Georgia. Otto was baptized into the church on March 31, 1906 in Panguitch. There is not much known of Otto's early life, but we assume from the history of his parents that he helped with sheep and cattle and learned to be a farmer. We don't know exactly how much schooling Otto had, but we assume he attended the grade school in Panguitch and possibly some in Upalco. Otto married Zelma Eliza Day on October 2, 1920, in Duchesne, Utah. They lived with Otto's parents in Upalco. The house was very small and quite cold in the winter time. Zelma helped around the farm with the chickens, chopping wood, and getting water. Otto helped in the fields with the cattle. In the summer of 1923, he and Zelma moved into a one-room house in the field that was 12x12 feet. They were happy to be on their own in their own home. Later on they moved into another house, two rooms, until they finally built a two room log house in Ioka, Utah where Otto had bought 80 acres of land to farm. Later in 1935 they bought 160 more acres of land that adjoined theirs, which made a total of 240 acres to farm. Times were difficult during the depression years and shortly after. Otto barely made enough money to pay the interest on the mortgage. Proceeds from selling cream and cattle was all they had to pay debts with. Otto also worked away from home to earn money to help pay for the property. He worked at Moon Lake and also for the Lake Fork Irrigation Company. When the Ioka road was being built, he worked on the rock crusher earning $3.00 a day. Most of the farm work was left to Zelma and the children while he was away working. They had four children that lived, having lost 6 other children either prematurely or shortly after birth. Using the money Otto got from his first seed crop, he bought his first car in 1934, a Ford that cost $500.00. Although Otto didn't enjoy weeding and caring for a garden, he always saw that the garden area was fertilized, plowed, cultivated, and watered. He built a storage shed that fresh fruits and vegetables and bottled fruits and vegetables could be stored in. There was usually a plentiful supply of fruits and vegetables, chickens, and pork raised on the farm. Some of the wheat raised was traded for flour. About 1940 Oto had his house remodeled, adding a living room and two more bedrooms. Electricity was put into the house at that time. This was when they got their first refrigerator. However, there was no indoor plumbing. All water was obtained from the irrigation ditch and put into barrels and allowed to settle and then dipped out. During wintertime snow was melted and used. Later, water was hauled in milk cans from Roosevelt. Plumbing was not installed in their house until about 1954. Otto and Zelma moved to Roosevelt, Utah April 7, 1962. They sold the farm and bought a nice home. The farm had become too much for Otto to take care of and he lacked the necessary machinery to help him. Otto was a quiet man--never said much. He worked long hours. But he loved and supported his family in all their activities. he supported Zelma when she worked at the school lunch in the schools in Roosevelt. He also supported her in obtaining materials for all the handiwork projects that she loved to do and when she worked at the county fairs. He was proud of the work she could do. Otto served as Superintendent of the Ward Sunday School, counselor in the Stake Elders Quorum Presidency and was a Ward Teacher. Otto took one of his sons to Salt Lake City and bought an Oldsmobile from Streator Chevrolet. This Oldsmobile had an exhaust whistle that when a lever was pulled sounded like a freight train whistle. Otto got a kick out of scaring people with it. He always would put his arm around his grandchildren and make them feel like they were important. He would give the children jobs to do so that they could earn a little money. He had one tractor to do his farming with a horse called Miss Cheats that the children used to ride a lot. He raked his hay with Miss Cheats and then would take a pitchfork and pitch it onto the hay wagon, and the children would tromp the hay to help it stay in the wagon. Otto used to plow with two horses and was encouraged to get a tractor so that it would be easier for him. He had to chase down the horses every spring of the year besides having to fatten them up months before he could plow with them. He eventually did get a tractor and machinery, but he always milked his cows by hand. One of Otto's grandchildren's dog got run over by a sleigh and the kids took the dog to Otto because they just knew that their Grandpa could fix anything and could bring the dog back to life. But he tried to tell them that there was no way he could bring it back to life. But the children thought he was perfect and could do it. He would joke with his grandkids as he taught them how to milk a cow, telling them that the way to milk was to pump the cows tail, and you would get green milk. Another time four of his grandchildren were riding Miss Cheats, his horse. The horse would make this certain noise and Otto told the children that it was singing to them. Some of his grandchildren remembered him eating gravy over his cake, milk on his tomatoes, and sardines. His children also remembered Otto as a patient, gentle, quiet, kind man who never burdened anybody else with his problems or with his things he had in life. His family also remembered a growth on one of his fingers and that it was quite big. He would get it caught in the door several times. The little kids would hold his finger and they would feel that. He also had a tumor that grew on the palm of his hand the size of a fat thumb and pained him when he handled farm tools, but he never had a desire to go to a doctor with this or any of his physical problems. One of Otto's children remembered the family attending their church meetings regularly, many times walking in the cold winter. And when they arrived the church house would be pretty smokey with a wood or coal heater on either side of the building. They remembered their father as a Sunday School Superintendent and that he was always faithful and did a good job whatever he did. He was good to help his children with their school homework to the best of his ability. He went to his daughters home to hang clothes on the line for her when she was pregnant, because she was afraid she would reach too high and have problems. A son remembers Otto as a hard worker and always had other farms leased to get enough hay to feed in the winter time. Times were tough back then, and it required long hours each day to make a living. Otto never did take time to go any place like fishing or camping. He was always too busy to take time off. Otto always did the best he could as he understood things. As things became easier, he had more time with grandkids and other things. With more free time and money easier to acquire, his working hours were shorter. Another son remembers Otto going out in the fields when they had a water turn and staying most of the night. They wondered how he could even see what he was doing on those dark nights. Otto encouraged this son to get an education and was eager to find out what the son was learning in college so that he could use the information on the farm. They would go up in the hills and cut cedar posts to fence in the hill so the cattle could have more pasture. And they worked together constructing a reservoir so that they could store the water and do more of the irrigating during the daytime instead of at night. Otto was brought up without much schooling and in poor circumstances having very little experience in good farming practices or handling money. He had to learn by experience which sometimes was not very rewarding. He worked many hard hours without seeing much return for his efforts. He loved to watch the crops grow and was proud of the newborn calves, pigs, lambs, and chickens. One of Otto's greatest frustrations was to catch the horses so he could begin working in the mornings. Often he would chase them around and around in the pasture before they would finally allow him to put a halter on them. Once he bought a colt from someone to be broke as a replacement work horse. When he got home with it, he tried to break it to lead. The colt reared over backwards and died as it hit the ground. Otto was so disappointed that tears came to his eyes. Otto couldn't stand to have noxious weeds grow on the farm, so he would have his boys pull or dig them up. One Sunday they had a lot of hay down and the clouds came up, so Otto was afraid it was going to rain and ruin the hay. He decided they would haul the hay instead of going to church. They hitched up the team and went out to haul the hay, but when they got to the field the wagon broke down. When they fixed one problem, another would develop. They never got any hay hauled that day and they never stayed home from church again to haul hay. Otto used to go up with his team of horses to work at a rock crusher a half-mile away. The horses pulled a hand-held scraper that pulled rocks into a crusher to make gravel. One time Otto was shoeing a horse and was rasping it with a rasp and the horse kicked and the rasp hit him in the face down under his nose. He always had a scar under his nose. His children remember him as a strong, silent man who never tried to outshine anyone. And he had good hands that showed signs of pain and hard work. It was difficult for his children to see him grow older and not be able to do the farm work. They were glad he could sell the farm and move to a comfortable home in Roosevelt. He seemed to be happy there. Even in Roosevelt he continued to do odd jobs as much as his health would permit. He began to have seizure attacks in the late 1960's. His health gradually grew worse. He was never bedfast but slept a lot in his chair. Otto died April 2, 1971 from one of his seizures. He is buried in the Ioka, Utah Cemetery. He was 76 years old when he passed away. __SHOWFACTBOX__